The Last Emperor 1987

When the past meets the future, conflict follows. When the grandiose meets the mundane, absurdity follows. And when isolation meets exposure, tragedy follows. The Last Emperor anchors itself on the convergence of these disparate forces, and looks at the ways, both striking and subtle, that the fallout impacts the protagonist and the world around him.

Those inflection points are the most interesting narrative elements of the film. The most captivating portion of The Last Emperor is it's first third or so, centering on the young Pu Yi's time in the forbidden city when he was being educated but also cowed. There's a great deal of irony and absurdity in those moments, but also pathos. The film's most memorable scene involves the three-year old king at a very solemn and important ceremony of coronation, wandering around and acting silly in the way that any young child would. The difference is that, as emperor, Pu Yi cannot simply be shushed or corrected. He is to be venerated in his every step by the grown men and women who look after him.

What kind of a person would emerge from that sort of rearing? That seems to be the question the film is most interested in, and the answer is sad and surprising. There is a pure humanity in that joyful kid who wants to run around the forbidden city, but also just wants to go home. There is an understandable ignorance as to how the world works, one that his tutor, Mr. Johnston, aims to account for. But that early part is an interesting character study in what being enabled at every turn does to even the most kind-hearted children.

At the same time, the films takes pains to explore the idea in which Pu Yi lives in a gilded cage, and highlights the irony that the boy who is, at least nominally, the most powerful man in all of China, is actually powerless to decide the course of his own life. He isn't allowed to leave. He plays a game where he feels his servants through a sheet that symbolizes his separation and yearning for real human contact. He is, as Mr. Johnston puts it, the loneliest boy in the world. Here is a young man who seems to have everything he could possibly wish for -- his every whim attended to, his every need met. And yet he is bound by tradition, kept in the dark by those who wish to protect him or live off his largesse, or simply stymied when he tries to stray from what is expected of him. The film devotes much of it runtime to establishing this gorgeous playground for Pu Yi, and then emphasizes how it's as much a prison, albeit a comfortable one, as the one he finds himself in by 1950.

But the film embraces a bit more complexity than that as well. While it invites you to pity Pu Yi despite his luxurious surroundings for how isolated he is, the crux of the film centers on how insulated he is. While Pu Yi resented the things that were kept from him, the way he was not able to leave to go to the West or experience more of the world beyond the gates of the Forbidden City, he realizes how much he has been shielded from. He sees the tragic events that have happened an in and around China during his lifetime, of the world that existed beyond those doors, and he blames himself for it. The thing that truly changes Pu Yi, that changes him from the son of Heaven to a humble gardener, is his realization that so many suffered under his watch, that rather than being a puppet or a mascot, he could have done something to prevent all this, or even help, and that he did not. The trajectory of The Last Emperor is one of a great leveling, and the epic scope of the film draws out the journey from god-king to peasant in an engaging fashion.

Unfortunately, much of the middle of Pu Yi's journey, the points between when he is a coddled and caged young boy and when he is a broken and wistful old man, tend to sag. The beginning of the film takes time to explore Pu Yi's development, slowly and measuredly, and the while the end moves much quicker, it dives into the man's changes of heart and realizations. But the big middle of the film gives in to a rush of check-the-box history lessons, full of exposition-filled events and stodgy character introduction that cause the movie's momentum to stall out and which make it feels as though it's trying to pack too much detail and too many steps into an already long tale. Pu Yi's adulthood, particularly his first tastes of modernity in Japanese-controlled Manchuria, are important to the story, but often feel rudderless and empty as compared with the beginning and ending of the film.

Thankfully, even when the narrative of the film is running on fumes, the visual splendor of it can still enthral. Director Bernardo Bertolucci takes full advantage of this film being one of the first Western productions allowed to film in the forbidden city. He and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro absolutely fill the movie with wide shots that encapsulate the scope and beauty of Pu Yi's ornate but suffocating residence. They contrast the grim bleakness of the Red prison with the lush, endlessly colorful people and settings of China during Pu Yi's reign. Everything from the gloriously intricate costumes, to the vast array of monks, servants, and functionaries creating a sea of color, to shots like Pu Yi under the sheets with his wives that convey sensuality in a tasteful manner and echo his prior hope for human contact while a fire rages outside, the aesthetic qualities of this film are unimpeachable.

In the same vein, the film's score serves it well. Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cong Su, and The Talking Heads' David Byrne find the right blend of diegetic traditional Chinese music and a more traditional orchestral store that nevertheless takes into account the film's setting and heightens the emotional resonance and atmosphere of the film.

There are several repeated motifs in the film: Pu Yi seeing his wet nurse and later his wife taken away and demanding that the door separating he and them be opened; the young Pu Yi wandering through the crowd of colorfully dressed individuals bowing at his coronation and the old Pu Yi wandering through a crowd of colorfully dressed Maoists; and of course, the end-of-film reappearance of the cricket he received at the beginning of the film. All of this conveys the idea of a cycle, that changes are made, that those in power are ignorant and oblivious, and that good people are hurt or squelched in the process. The Last Emperor shows Pu Yi breaking out of this cycle, with slow but incredibly growing pains, and finding solace in a humble life. The scattershot historical completionism of the middle portion of the film, in addition to a few odd diversions, keeps it from being truly great, but the story at the center of it, of one man's steady breaking and awakening, framed with visual virtuosity, still makes The Last Emperor compelling.

A long, delicate meditation on the necessity of a ceremonial public role in the face of several looming, massive, cultural revolutions. It's also an essay on the corrupting power of an absurdly sheltered life. Following the private and public trials of Puyi, who ascended to the imperial throne before his fourth birthday, it's one soul-crunching onslaught of manipulation after another over the course of several decades. Almost every single member of the cast is either disgustingly entitled or a steadfast, unwavering fanatic to a self-serving cause, including the emperor himself who often falls into both camps. He's naïve and misguided, a result of his isolated regal upbringing, but also wants desperately to make a lasting positive mark on the world. It's frustrating to watch his attempts at reform explode on the launchpad over and over again due to the oppressive presence of a corrupt group of advisors, a hamstring he's never able to overcome.

Though it has a tendency to linger far too long, the film is drop-dead gorgeous when it's set inside China's famous forbidden city. When later chapters shift to other locations, it drains that life from the screen and the already-dreary story really starts to drag. A major downer, it can be powerful at times but suffers from a total lack of resolution.